Like the title says, I've got a '93 Hatch with a '94 B18C1 that I swapped in back in February of this year. I've searched around on google for solutions but all the threads I saw, the problem only occured when the throttle was at a certain percent or the car was at a certain speed. My problem occurs all the time, at idle and at speed.
A little back story: Before I put the swap in I took the head to a very reputable machine shop and had them mill it .005, replace the valve guides (just the exhaust side) and replace the valve seals, as well as do a valve job (shafts and rockers too). I replaced several things with new parts, these included the distributor (cap and rotor too), water pump, timing belt, timing belt tensioner, Top end gasket set, plug, wires, and oil pan gasket. I didn't touch the bottom end other than the oil pan gasket because the cylinders still had the factory cross hatchings and they looked very clean. The motor has been running wonderfully other than an idle issue I've been lazy to investigate. It would idle around 1100 until warm then it would have a slow idle problem, revving from 1200 down to about 2-300 sometimes it would die. I would restart it and it would continue doing the same thing.
Fast forward to last night; I'm on my way home going up a pretty steep hill that I take every day not getting on it at all. I was in 2nd gear at about 3-4k rpms and all of a sudden near the top of the hill it sounded like I had an exhaust leak. I continue on my way home (about 3 miles from where I was) keeping rpms as low as possible. Once I get home I check my exhaust, no leaks anywhere. I grab my timing light and hook it up because once I got the hood popped the sound was much louder and sounded like a miss. All the cylinders had a normal pattern except for the 2nd one (counting left to right facing the front of the car, reference first picture below). The flash from the timing light was very intermittent. I tried an extra plug wire I had laying around and that didn't fix the problem.From there I stopped for the night because it was almost 5 in the morning.
Today I took my header off and had a look at the valves and this is what I found...

Cylinder 1

Cylinder 2

Cylinder 3

Cylinder 4


Something is obviously going on with Cylinder 2, I don't know what it means or what could cause that. I need as much help as I can get with this. I don't have a compression tester so I haven't done a compression test. I just tried to pull some CEL codes and I have NONE. If I left out any needed info, let me know and I will get it up. Any help is GREATLY appreciated, Thanks in advance.

 

Any help? I'm at a complete loss of what it could be or what could cause it. A friend has told me he thinks that I should take the head back in to the machine shop and have them look it over and make sure nothing happened to it and get new valves put in, at this time I can't really afford that.
I feel like its a distributor problem or spark problem or injector problem..

 

Well I did a compression test on the motor. In reference to the picture above, Cylinder 1-120, Cylinder 2-20, Cylinder 3-190, Cylinder 4-195. Looks like I'm gonna have to pull it out, bore it, and re-ring it.

For future reference to anyone who may find this thread or anyone who was curious, the plug that came out of the number 2 cylinder also had a similar look to the valves pictured.

 

I did a wet test tonight.
Cylinder1, 155. Cylinder 2, 30. Cylinder 3, 220. Cylinder 4, 240.

While doing both the wet and dry tests there was a very noticeable hissing sound from cylinder 2 that didn't come from any of the other cylinders. I do remember hearing the same sound while the car was running the last time.

From what I've read, if there is a large number difference between the wet and dry tests, then your rings are the culprit for low compression. Since there was only a 10 psi difference on cylinder 2, that leads me to believe that my problem may be with my valves?
Can anyone shed any light at all on my situation? I'm shooting in the dark right now. I know my next step is probably going to need to be a leakdown test but is there anything I can do between now and this weekend when I can buy a leakdown tester that may help solve what is going on?